


Housekeeping

by straight_up_gay



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: (kinda?), F/F, Just Witches Bein' Witches, Old Married Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 07:39:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7968169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straight_up_gay/pseuds/straight_up_gay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nanny Ogg didn't do housekeeping, but sometimes she made exceptions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Housekeeping

The poets around Lancre often said that love was two bodies sharing one soul, although by this point, they were smart enough not to say it around Granny Weatherwax. She'd grilled one of them on how the soul knew which set of arms and legs it was moving, and whether it got confusing when one of the bodies was trying to eat while the other...did its business. The young man had protested, weakly, that it was metaphorical, and Granny's only response had been a milk-curdling "Oh. One of them metterfors."

Nanny Ogg didn't like the phrase neither. When things wrapped up too neat like that, they usually weren't true.

***

Esme always forgot to blow out her candles before she went Borrowing. Well, "forgot" might be the wrong word. She liked to light 'em all, which was good for creating a suitably Dramatic Look, but not when it came to cool drafts and loose sheets of paper. Which left Gytha Ogg to go over to her cottage and blow them out.

She left one lit in the kitchen so she could see to do a bit of dusting. After a few days of Granny Borrowing, the old cottage had relaxed itself enough to allow dust and a few surreptitious cobwebs. They soon gave way before Nanny's persistent, if inexpert, approach to cleaning.

The door to Granny's bedroom was left slightly open. This wasn't precisely an invitation, or at least not the kind of invitation with fancy gold nibbling on the edges. It was more in the way of a happy accident. A witch's cottage was like her second face, and it sometimes showed more about her than her real face. And if a door might happen to open for an old friend, there wasn't much a witch could say to that.

***

The first time she'd met Esme, she'd been bringing over her mum's Distressed Pudding to the Weatherwax household. She'd been considered too young to know about the Business with Lily Weatherwax, which of course meant that she knew everything.

What she hadn't been prepared for was a young woman with a face like mountain thunder and eyes that had been cried out days ago.

"Go away. We aten't takin' company right now."

At sixteen, Gytha Ogg had already known How to Get On With People. That was probably why she knew what to say next. 

"I remembers you! You're the one who sat on Nanny Gripes' doorstep until she taught you! She told my aunt Temperance that she'd never met a more shameless girl."

Despite the hardness in her eyes, the girl had given her a small, smug smile. "I sat there for two weeks. In the snow." She had paused for a moment. "You're the Ogg girl, right? The way Nanny Gripes told it, you'd be the first one to know about shameless." It hadn't sounded like an insult.

She had grinned right back. "Gytha Ogg, at your service."

And Esme hadn't opened the door further, but she hadn't closed it neither.

That was the way it went from then on, with Esme keeping the door propped open and Nanny following.

***

Nanny tiptoed in, taking care not step on the creaky floorboards. The main difference between Esme sleeping and Esme Borrowing was the snoring. The other difference was the face. Even in sleep, Esme didn't lose her pinched look of control. But Borrowing was different. Her face was almost completely slack, a sight that would be unnerving to anyone but Gytha Ogg. Gytha Ogg knew Granny Weatherwax's face like she knew the inside of her own cottage.

People didn't always understand their friendship. There were them who came to wondering why Nanny was content to be, in their words, second best. Of course, those words weren't spoken around Nanny Ogg, because even second-best witches could turn nasty if they wanted to.

Then there were the other ones. Nanny remembers Old Mr. Hubel, back when most of her clients were older, not younger, than her. They'd been weeding his garden patch together when he'd straightened up and said, "I don't understand it. You and the Weatherwax girl?"

She'd given him the Eye, a gentler cousin of the Eye that Esme had.

"Beg pardon, but you seem like a nice girl. I mean, nice to the boys, and all that. And Esme? She's, well, a bit young to be such a tough old stick. No bend in her, that's for sure." He paused. "All I mean is that people might get the wrong idea about you two."

Even by this point, Gytha knew Esme almost better than herself. She knew there was bend in her - when she'd lost the Chiddwick baby, when she was wore out from three days straight of witching, when Gytha'd set her own hair on fire trying to straighten it and she'd laughed like a schoolgirl. She was near ready to tell him that he was a daft old man who shouldn't tell tales on people he didn't know.

Instead, because she was Gytha and not Esme, she'd said, "I heard from Goodie Hubel that your old stick's got quite a lot of bend in it." She let a meaningful moment elapse, and finished with, "Your garden hoe. There's a crack right down the shaft. It needs fixin', and soon."

The horrified look on his face was a memory that would carry her through many a dreary day. Gytha never aimed to be a nice girl, certainly not to people daft enough to insult Esme Weatherwax to her face. And witches didn't care if people got the Wrong Ideas about them.

***

Nanny tiptoed over to her bedside table, waiting a moment before blowing out the candle there. Granny's old memororabilililia box was sitting open on the floor. Yes, there was the phoenix feather, the letters, the ancient shells and (Nanny's favourite) the single, white unicorn hair, sitting a little ways out of the box

She tucked the hair under the bottle with the feather in it, trying not to cackle.

***

Unicorns, as it turns out, had a rather old-fashioned understanding of the word "maiden". They could have gone in for a round of Nanny Ogg's famous Edjukation1, the one that witches in the Ramtops had been subjected to for generations. Nanny always started her talks with the birds and the bees and, when the girls in the back started looking too smug, continued on to the birds and the birds 2. They ended off looking at her with a mixture of approval and consternation, as though she'd cracked a secret she had no right to. Served 'em right, thinking they had a leg up on an old woman who had been getting her legs up since before they were born.

Her favourite bit of Edjukation had been the only one Granny had attended. Granny had sat through the first half with the same unfussed look she wore for births and deaths. But when Nanny mentioned the mischief that two young ladies could get up to, Granny's gaze had sharpened. By the time she'd finished listing the various comfortable barns they shouldn't get up to it in, Granny was staring past Nanny's left shoulder with a look that could melt rock . Nanny finished off by saying, "If you has any questions, don't hesitate to ask Esme." The younger witches had erupted in nervous laughter, assuming a joke at their expense. If they'd been able to see Granny's face, they would have known who the joke was on.

Oh, sure, Esme could outdistance any man. But she never did seem to run as fast when Gytha Ogg was the one doing the following.

***

Granny's old clock had stopped again. It'd never been the best of pieces, but it was the nicest one you could buy from the shonky shop over in Slice. And, after fifty years, it kept up a good, reassuring tick.

She'd bought it for Esme after that disastrous Small Gods Day Eve, the first one since Esme's mother had died. Usually, Esme didn't hold with the sort of celebratin' that happened on Small Gods Day Eve, saying with a sniff that it was for lovers. But that night, she'd gotten drunk for the first time in her life, and fair pulled Gytha over the fire with her. Afterwards, she'd kissed her like she did her witching; unbending, proud, and thorough.

Nanny had never been able to work out if that made them married. It was certainly more of a ceremony than she'd had with two of her husbands.

Nanny had to pull the chair over to get the clock down from its perch, and turned it over in her hands to reach the key. Witches usually didn't go in for inscriptions, nor could they generally afford them. Instead, Gytha had pencilled on the back in her neatest handwriting, "Frum Mrs. Gytha Weatherwax, on the occashun of our wedding".

Esme had damn near killed her for that one, but she'd kept the clock.

She turned the key, wincing at the cold metal. It pushed back against her when she first tried to wind it, then yielded.

In the other room, Granny breathed more deeply, the kind of breath that said she was coming back from a Borrowing. Without meaning to, Nanny breathed in at the same time. And there they were, two people in the same body.

(The inside of her head was, for a moment, vast. Nanny Ogg had always had a broad mind, but now it had deepened. It echoed.

And a faint voice echoed through it - _can't be having with this - gytha ogg you meddlesome old baggage_ \- in a tone that suggested its owner was far less annoyed than they were trying to pretend. If she listened close, it sounded like the voice she'd heard up on the gnarly ground fifty years ago, on a morning so blue it didn't seem real 3.

That was the problem with gettin' into other people's heads like Esme did. If they knew you too well, they could get you right back.)

Then the clock started ticking, and the house breathed out.

***

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. It deserved the capital "E"
> 
> 2\. And, when young men were present, the bees and the bees.
> 
> 3\. Well, it hadn't been _precisely_ real. The gnarly ground did funny things, especially when you were in love.
> 
> ***
> 
> My Garbage Brain at 1 am: hey wouldn't it be great if you wrote about Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax bein' old n' gay together?


End file.
